Prism Kitty Games
Plague & Pitchforks: an illuminated letter P, with a peasant fighting a rat inside it, in a border of medieval marginalia

Survivors-like

Plague & Pitchforks

In playtest

A survivors-like set in the margins of a medieval illuminated manuscript. Pick a wretch, from a swineherd to a snail knight, and hold off the plague-year hordes with pitchforks, holy geese and bagpipes, across seven roads from the Countryside to the Great Library.

A horde of monks and gargoyles closing in under the Cathedral’s stained-glass light

A survivors-like in the margins of a medieval manuscript

The plague is abroad, the drolleries have climbed down off the vellum, and somebody has to hold them off with a pitchfork.

Pick a wretch, take the road, and outlast the hordes that pour in from every margin: plague rats and angry villagers, killer rabbits and dog-headed men, flagellants, gargoyles, and Death on a pale horse. Your weapons strike on their own; you choose where to stand, what to take, and what to become.

The book of wretches, open at Brother Brendan the Navigator, drawn in his leather boat beside a whale

Twenty-two wretches, and some kept secret

Jehan the Swineherd, Sir Escargot, the Plague Doctor, Brother Brendan, the Goose Girl, the Fool, the Frog Prince and fifteen more, each with a trait and skills of their own. Jehan alone grows drollery parts as he levels: a goose’s neck, a hare’s ears, a snail’s shell, a fish’s tail, a trumpet where no trumpet should be, until he is more marginal beast than man.

A level-up: three parchment cards to choose from, the Drollery’s Trumpet, the Banner of the Mob and the Wheel of Fortune

Twenty-six weapons, and what they become

Pitchforks, holy geese, plague bells, rotten cabbages, bagpipes and a rain of frogs, each of which evolves with the right relic into something worse: the Hayfork of Judgement, the Archangel Goose, the Death Knell, the Pipes of Doom.

The Great Bookworm, a giant red worm, among the Great Library’s shelves

Seven roads, twenty-one bosses

From the Countryside through Plague Town, the Fens, the Cemetery, the Cathedral and the Catacombs to the Great Library, each road brings its own beasts and three bosses, and each road’s bosses are hardier than the last’s.

Choose thy Month: three cards from the medieval calendar, August’s threshing, March’s pruning and June’s mowing

The Labours of the Months

Walk a road under one of the twelve months of the medieval calendar, feasting in January, hawking in May, treading the grapes in September, and each one bends the rules, for better and for worse.

The bestiary, open at the Bonnacon, a bull that voids its bowels over three acres

A book to fill

A bestiary of 68 beasts, a Treasury of boons bought with the florins you bring home, and 171 pilgrim badges to earn, some of them hidden in the margins.

Plague Town’s cobbled square, its timber houses, and a giant black-and-white cat strolling through the crowd

Ink, washes and gold leaf

In the style of real medieval marginalia, in brown ink, soft washes and gold leaf. Playable in English, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Ukrainian.

Questions, or writing about the game?

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